In the latest issue of Radiology Business Journal, just out, Nisha Mehta, MD, urges her fellow radiologists to help the profession “fix its PR problem.” This, she points out, is readily evidenced by the fact that few healthcare consumers—and more than a few healthcare workers—have never met a radiologist or heard what radiologists do.

The percentage of women interested or working in diagnostic radiology (DR) remains stagnant. The most recent statistic of women participating in DR was 26.9 percent in 2013, compared to 25.5 percent in 1990. 

The American College of Radiology has updated its guidelines on imaging appropriateness for hundreds of diagnostic, interventional and radiation-oncology scenarios. This latest edition of ACR Appropriateness Criteria covers several topics new to the digital publication, including suspected thoracic aortic aneurysm, tinnitus and radiologic management of central venous access.

Structured reporting in radiology has its detractors, but few would argue against the proposition that the days are numbered for traditional free-text narrative reports. The latter vary too much in language, length and style to consistently aid referring physicians making care decisions—a potentially serious demerit in the “prove your value” care era—while structured reporting offers a way to improve on not only consistency and actionability but also profession-wide quality.

In its fourth annual update on medical overuse, JAMA Internal Medicine names 10 procedures and practices that are ripe for the curtailing. In the category of “overtesting,” the klieg lights fall on four exams—and all are based in imaging.

Anthem’s recent decision to no longer pay for outpatient CT and MR exams performed in hospitals didn’t come from nowhere—and, going forward, the move is not likely to be an outlier among private payers’ business stratagems.

Health Imaging caught up with Christie James, MS, president-elect of the Radiology Business Management Association, at last Friday’s annual meeting of RBMA’s New England Chapter in Somerville, Mass. James, whose fulltime job is operations manager of radiology revenue cycle management for the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization, begins her 2018–19 tenure next April.

In Harris County, Texas, three outpatient family-medicine affiliates of Baylor College of Medicine have slashed their unnecessary orders of lumbar-spine MRIs—and improved the appropriateness ratings of those they did order—by attending educational sessions and using the American College of Radiology’s R-SCAN program.